Federico Kircheis <feder...@kircheis.it> writes: > I could not find any information if something like the following has > already been proposed (and eventually rejected): > > moreutils should also provide /usr/bin/parallel.moreutils, even if gnu > parallel is not installed(!) > > gnu parallel should also provide /usr/bin/parallel.gnu
Currently gnu parallel calls dpkg-divert to rename the moreutils provided binary and man page, if present. moreutils needs to do nothing and nothing provides parallel.gnu. It's a simple case since apparently only these two packages provide the parallel command. This setup seems low effort for maintainers and low pollution for users. I certainly don't want both parallel and parallel.moreutils in /usr/bin. How many more files would need to be added in /usr/bin to satisfy all possible conflicts? I think you'll just need to add some tedious boilerplate code to your scripts to figure out which, if any, parallel is installed.
